The Minimum Wage Must Be Raised

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"When we talk about the kind of folks whose lives will be made better by raising the minimum wage, we're not talking about a couple teenagers earning extra spending money to supplement their allowance. We're talking about providers and breadwinners. Working Americans with bills to pay and mouths to feed."

-- Thomas Perez

How much money do we really need? I’m going to law school and according to all the statistics I’ve seen, lawyers can make a lot of money. My goal is to make as much money as I can and live as well as possible. But is it really fair to the poor working call to barely scrap by and make ends meet? I hope by the time I have a financially stable job I can look back and help others in need because minimum wage in my opinion is out of hand. It needs to be raised to a living wage for people to provide for their families without having to starve and live on food stamps. These are some reasons why I think the minimum wage should be raised.

Obviously minimum wage has increased significantly since 1968 where it was at $1.60 but, how much has it really increased in connection with inflation and rising prices of things such as food, gas, land and etc? That is what's really lost in the whole conversation of increasing minimum wage to give people more money doesn't necessarily mean you can buy more. Senator Tom Harkin made a great statement regarding inflation senator Harkin said "today, tens of millions of hardworking Americans who are earning at or near the minimum wage can’t even aspire to live a middle-class life or achieve the American Dream. Instead, they are falling further and further behind" (Harkin). This is because of inflation, although minimum wage has increased from $1.60 in 1968 to $ 7.25 in 2013 we actually have less buying power. What that means is that $1.60 in 1968 would get us more food than $7.25 would in 2013. People are tricked into thinking that small incremental increases are good because we are making more, guess what we're actually making less. If we kept that $1.60 wage today and indexed it to account for inflation minimum wage should be at $10.56 in 2013.

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